Secondly. The covenant of God, as ordained by him, manifests that the exercise of vowing unto him was also ordained. That was appointed. In statements regarding the sovereign arrangements of providence is this taught. These were brought into view, and their continuance promised, in the covenant made with Noah. In that covenant it was secured that the waters of another flood should not overflow the earth. In that too it was promised, that summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, should not cease. The covenant, therefore, as well as these ordinances, its results, was ordained. And accordingly was ordained, all connected with its dispensations. From the use of a term employed in prophecy in reference to the waters of the sea, this, moreover, appears. "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it."[486] The term here rendered _placed_, in this passage means _appointed_; and in the two following passages is applied to the covenant. The statement, "He appointed a law in Israel,"[487] hence declares the institution of his law as a decree. And the demands of the covenant being those of the law, even as his law, the covenant it intimates as ordained, not merely by his high authority, but according to his sovereign will. And thus too are expounded David's last words,--"He hath made with me," or rather _appointed for me_, "an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure,"[488] as intimating not merely his cleaving to God's covenant, but his recognition of that covenant as according to his good pleasure, in all things decreed.